School safety is at the forefront of many Americans’ minds these days, and on Monday morning, Governor Scott Walker signed a bill into law that gives Wisconsin schools $100 million in school safety grant funding.  

Governor Walker signed the bill at Victor Haen Elementary School in Kaukauna, just after 8:30 a.m., surrounded by 4th grade students.

There’s no dollar limit on the amount schools can apply for, and there’s also no mandate on how the money can be used, as long as it is spent on school safety.  For example, grants can be used to upgrade a school’s physical infrastructure, or to hire additional personnel, like school safety officers.
Governor Walker compared the initiative to changes made in the airline industry after 9/11.

“Others have talked about specific threats – what we tried to do is address all threats,” Walker said. “The threats that these grants would be in place to help prevent from, would not only be about firearms, they’d be about explosives, or any other weapon. That’s much of what we did as a country after 9/11. We didn’t just focus on explosives, we focused on any threat to those going through our airports and our airplanes. The same is true here, we don’t want to limit it to just one threat.” 

Schools are able to apply for the grants immediately.